This 'Whale' saved 700 planes during the Vietnam War

When armchair historians discuss naval aviation during the Vietnam War, the focus usually turns to the F-4 Phantom. That's the multi-service plane flown by the Navy's only aces of the war — Randall "Duke" Cunningham and Willie Driscoll.

The RA-3B Skywarrior decked out in camouflage and displaying its various reconnaissance package options. (Photo from Wikimedia Commons)

That plane is the A-3 Skywarrior – often called the "Whale" due to its size. It certainly was big – more than 76 feet long, and with a 72-foot wingspan and a maximum takeoff weight of 82,000 pounds.

The A-3 had a range of 2,100 miles and could carry 12,800 pounds of payload.

While the Skywarrior did some bombing missions early on, it shined in the electronic warfare and tanker missions. The Navy turned 85 planes into KA-3B tankers, and 34 were also given jamming pods to become the EKA-3B.

The KA-3B could carry a lot of av gas. (Photo from Wikimedia)

These planes not only could pass a lot of gas to the planes in a carrier's air wing, they helped to jam enemy radars, blinding them to an incoming attack until it was too late.

Other Skywarrior variants included the RA-3B reconnaissance plane, the ERA-3B electronic aggressor platform, and the EA-3B electronic intelligence version.

As a tanker, the KA-3B and EKA-3B didn't just enable planes to strike deeper into North Vietnam. These tankers also gave planes gas to get back home – in some cases after suffering serious damage. Aviation historian Joe Baugher noted that as many as 700 Navy and Marine Corps planes may have been saved by the Whale's tanker capabilities.

That statistic might be the most important. When an EB-66E bomber was shot down during the Easter Offensive of 1972, it resulted in a massive rescue effort to retrieve the lone survivor, Lieutenant Colonel Iceal "Gene" Hambleton, that resulted in the loss of five aircraft, with 11 Americans killed in action and two more captured.

The last A-3 variants, EA-3Bs, managed to see action during Operation Desert Storm in 1991 with VQ-2 before they were retired. E-3 airframes, though, flew in private service as R&D for avionics until 2011.